TL;DR:
- Movement relaunches as an independent Layer 1 and abandons Ethereum’s L2 model to focus on payments and stablecoin remittances in emerging markets.
- Move Industries gained access to licensed payment systems in the U.S., Canada and the EU, targeting a remittance market of approximately $685 billion.
- The Movement Network Foundation repurchased 19% of tokens allocated to investors, equivalent to 4.1% of the total supply, as part of the restructuring.
The relaunch of Movement as a sovereign L1 blockchain marks the most significant turning point in the project’s history. The network, originally designed to connect chains based on the Move programming language with Ethereum, now operates under a proprietary technology stack, with dedicated validators and settlement times below 500 milliseconds, far from the seven-second latency that characterized its previous architecture as an L2.
Move Industries, the firm that assumed development responsibilities following the 2025 scandal, formalized a series of alliances with key industry players. Circle launched USDCx as the network’s natively issued stablecoin to support payments, treasury and savings products. Wallets KAST and Sorted also joined, along with tokenization projects Oro, Yuzu Money and Zoth, and protocol Avant, which will use Movement’s infrastructure to offer yield and treasury products.
We have secured access to licensed payment rails in the US, EU, and Canada to become the stablecoin settlement and yield layer for emerging markets.
Billions of people are financially underserved.
We aim to fix that. pic.twitter.com/ix89ngoMDr
— Movement (@movement_xyz) June 2, 2026
The Weight of Movement’s Past
The relaunch cannot be understood without the context of the scandal that marked the project from its inception. According to a Binance investigation published in early 2025, market maker Rentech controlled 66 million MOVE tokens — approximately 5% of the total supply — which were massively sold hours after launch, triggering a price drop and the temporary suspension of operations on Binance and Coinbase. Then-CEO Rushi Manche was removed following an internal investigation that identified him as a participant in coordinating the dump. The MOVE token fell to around $0.01, well below its all-time high of $1.45.
Torab Torabi, who previously worked in business development for the project and now leads Move Industries, described the previous network as a “Frankenstein” chain assembled with third-party dependencies such as Celestia for data availability and Ethereum for settlement. The transition to a vertically integrated architecture, which includes the incorporation of money market infrastructure project Canopy, aims to eliminate those limitations.
We Are No Longer a Crypto Company, We Are a Fintech
Torabi noted that Movement is specifically targeting the remittance market of around $685 billion serving low- and middle-income countries, and that he has already held meetings with authorities in Ethiopia, including the country’s president and the Ministry of Finance. “Essentially, we are no longer a crypto company. We are a fintech company that uses blockchain rails,” he stated.
